Non-blocking or event-driven programming is in high fashion today. Using non-blocking technology, it’s possible to write single-threaded daemons that serve high concurrency workloads and interact with slow backend/external systems (e.g., databases and webservices).

Javascript (i.e., node.js) is a popular language to write code for this, but many people don’t realize you can do the same thing in good old Perl.

This talk will cover some of the basics of non-blocking programming in high-level languages (JS and Perl), including an overview of how it works, Perl and JS modules that make it possible or more accessible, some paradigms you need to wrap your mind around to write successful event-driven programs, and some tips and tricks for debugging. Examples will be given of how to interact with both web services and MySQL from JS and Perl using non-blocking libraries.

This talk will be targeted towards beginner/intermediate programmers who want a high-level overview about how to get started with non-blocking programming.

Jay Janssen

Percona, Inc.

Jay has recently joined Percona as a MySQL consultant. He previously worked at Yahoo! for 7 years as an expert in MySQL and High Availability technologies on a team that helps develop and enforce best practices for Business continuity and HA across Yahoo.

Comments

ben hengst

07/20/2012 10:30pm PDT

Thanks again for the great primer on how to wrangle AnyEvent. I think you did a fantastic job of picking just enough material for us to cover in the allotted time. I never felt overwhelmed not did I get board. Great job.